I never knew I could feel as frustrated as I felt when one of my kids was little and would refuse to follow my directions. One of my family's favorite stories is the time I stuck my tongue out at my oldest child when he was 4 years old and he was refusing to let me buckle him into his car seat. After buckling him in and he complained one last time, I stuck my tongue out, closed the door, and the got into the front seat of the minivan we had at the time. My son then said, in a tiny, surprised voice, "Mommy? You stick your tongue at me?" I replied, "Yes, I did, and that was not nice. I was feeling very frustrated that you would not buckle up and I did not show my feelings very well. I am sorry." Now... this is a funny memory mostly because I did not lose my cool any more than sticking my tongue out at a 4 year old (not mature, of course, but not very far down the "inappropriate parenting" path luckily). If interested, I can certainly come up with many other examples of frustrating and not-so-mature parenting moments over my 22 years as a mom.
I share the above to make it clear that I do not think parenting is simple and easy, but it is something we can survive with laughter, love, supportive family and friends, and a desire to find ways to improve along the way.
As a therapist I work with parents to learn new ways to highlight their kids' strengths and qualities of greatness, to find more opportunities to connect and energize the positive bond with our kids, and to be forgiving of our mistakes and not-so-mature moments. The Nurtured Heart Approach is a wonderful way to accomplish these goals and it has been shown to be highly effective with typical and with more challenging kids as well.
For more information on The Nurtured Heart Approach, please watch this video by Howard Glasser, Ph.D. who developed and fine-tuned this approach over the past 25 years.
8-Minute Video by Howard Glasser -- The Nurtured Heart Approach